Cop on the Beat: Old Idea Revived to Fight Crime

Police officers are back pounding beats in about 200 communities rather than cruising in patrol cars, signaling a nationwide shift in crime-fighting philosophy, law enforcement experts say.

“I think it’s definitely a trend. This is policing of the 1990s,” said Bruce Benson, deputy chief in Flint, Mich., where more than 43% of the uniformed patrol force is permanently assigned to foot patrols.

The return to the beat has been made in cities nationwide because people prefer to have policemen walking streets rather than patrolling in cars, according to Robert Trojanowicz, director of the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice.

“Citizens feel safer, they like the closer contact with the police,” he said.

Foot patrol officers have been around as long as most police departments but became less fashionable with the increase in radio-equipped patrol cars in the 1940s and 1950s, he said.

Unlike their predecessors, the new breed of beat cop is more likely to organize block clubs and set up citizen crime watches.

“We somehow perpetuated the myth that we could be all things in crime fighting,” said Robert Kliesmet, president of the International Union of Police Assns. in Washington. “If we can’t reduce crime, we can at least teach people how to protect themselves, and that’s basically what the foot patrols are doing.”

Trojanowicz said he has advised police in New York, Houston, Miami, Milwaukee, Richmond, Va., and other cities on incorporating foot patrols into their departments. About 200 communities have adopted some sort of foot beat program, he said.

Most of the interest was spurred by a landmark, experimental program from 1979 through 1981 in Flint, Mich., created by a $1-million grant from the Mott Foundation. A Michigan State University study showed that the program resulted in an 8.2% drop in crime and a 42% drop in police calls.

Flint votes raised their property taxes to make the program citywide in 1982 and overwhelmingly renewed that tax in June.

Some police say the Flint model is not feasible everywhere; others say there is a resistance to moving away from the more-aloof, motorized patrols to the more community-oriented foot patrols.

“It (foot patrol) decentralizes a lot of the power in the police department,” Flint’s Benson said. “Some police administrators and politicians are very leery of that.”